Guest20074

I've read the thread twice actually. I went over to ANIA site, but I thought I would ask anyway since there are no NI jobs where currently I live (I plan on moving when I finish my BSN) and I was hoping to get some experience in an adjacent field and bridge over in some way. Thank you for answer my question .

I'm interested in getting some experience to prepare me for the field of the Nursing Informatics. There is a job opening in the HIS department at where I work and I wanted to know, is it a good idea to get some HIS experience to help prepare me for NI?

Actually, it's about NVCC (Northern Virginia Community College) which is located in NOVA (Northern Virginia).

I'm in the online RN-BS program. Started in January 08. :)

Thank you so much. This is what I was looking for.

I'm very much aware of the opportunities BS nurses have in nursing, but are there any opportunities for BS nurses out side of nursing? Are there any other professions that will take a nursing degree as an education requirement?

NO!! You do deal less with patients' families, but the surgeons can be even worse. As an OR nurse, you're there for safety reasons and you *HAVE* to have the courage to speak up when you see that something is wrong.

I'm considering moving from the Southeastern VA area to Northern VA and I'm curious to now how much do nurses make in that area?

I originally did Surgical Stepdown with a lot of medicine initially, so when I joined the agency I decided to do Med/Surg. The only orientation I got was on the Psych unit where I was oriented to some of their computer systems and their medicine kardexs. The actually machines where medication was stored I already knew because my previous job used them as well.

For some reason I couldn't edit my original post, so I'll just type it here in a second post. I too had been out of nursing for a year so I could work on pursuing my BSN and I've started doing med-surg for an agency while doing so. Someone on the board recommended that if you haven't done med-surg for awhile, it's best not to pursue it unless you can get some form of new grad orientation to the floor. I will admit it is hard, but I think that if you can review some of the stuff (like how to read EKGs, etc.) and with your 15 year history of working med-surg, it will be easier for you.

I would certainly like to hear other's opinion on this. I'm sort of in the same situation myself.

We use Techni-care in our OR quite a bit. Very effective and I love the fact that it's a very versatile cleaner too.

I disagree. Smaller O.R.'s often do not have first assistants, which means if you scrub, you will often have to first assist and scrub at the same time which is very difficult for a new nurse. Surgeries usually take longer in teaching hospitals, which is less hectic for new nurses. Like it or not, large teaching hospitals are the best place for new nurses. You have the most resources there. I've been in both, and some smaller ORs do have first assistants. Where I work at, they are in *every* surgical area from the main OR, ambulatory surgery, to the endovascular lab, and even some of the L&D OR suites. The nurses in smaller OR's make excellent resources. So as a nurse in a smaller OR, you won't always be without resources. And even in large teaching hospitals, your resources go home after 4:00pm.

I'm in currently in the same boat myself and I've decided that maybe going to a smaller OR would be a good thing for me. If in the end it doesn't work out for you at the large teaching hospital, lots of smaller ORs are hiring nurses.

I've been a nurse for 7 years, but I'm currently new to the OR doing the 6 month RN internship. My time in the internship is up in January and I don't know what specialty to choose. What specialty are you in and how did you know it was right for you?